Projection Effects and Strategic Ambiguity in Electoral Competition

TY - UNPB

T1 - Projection Effects and Strategic Ambiguity in Electoral Competition

AU - Jensen, Thomas

N1 - JEL Classification: D72, D83

PY - 2007

Y1 - 2007

N2 - Theories from psychology suggest that voters' perceptions of political positions depend on their non-policy related attitudes towards the candidates. A voter who likes (dislikes) a candidate will perceive the candidate's position as closer to (further from) his own than it really is. This is called projection. If voters' perceptions are not counterfactual and voting is based on perceived policy positions then projection gives a generally liked candidate an incentive to be ambiguous. In this paper we construct and analyze a formal model to investigate under which conditions this incentive survives in the strategic setting of electoral competition, even if voters dislike ambiguity per se

AB - Theories from psychology suggest that voters' perceptions of political positions depend on their non-policy related attitudes towards the candidates. A voter who likes (dislikes) a candidate will perceive the candidate's position as closer to (further from) his own than it really is. This is called projection. If voters' perceptions are not counterfactual and voting is based on perceived policy positions then projection gives a generally liked candidate an incentive to be ambiguous. In this paper we construct and analyze a formal model to investigate under which conditions this incentive survives in the strategic setting of electoral competition, even if voters dislike ambiguity per se

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - electoral competition

KW - ambiguity

KW - voter perception

KW - cognitive consistency

KW - projection

M3 - Working paper

BT - Projection Effects and Strategic Ambiguity in Electoral Competition

PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

ER -